Interim T Mobile report

dave_1

has implicated Kloeden ...package sent to his girlfriend in 2000 from clinic...he claims as multivits, admits he got sent it. Bruyneel to meet him next week.

micron

why would doctors send him multivitamins? does he not have shops near where he lives where he can go and buy like the rest of us?

Kléber

Why does Kloeden need to have vitamins shipped to his girlfriend from a university department? Was she not having a balanced diet?

Considering Sinkewitz admitted to receiving packages of EPO by post from Freiburg Uni's Department of Doping, Kloeden's tales are looking a bit dishonest.

dave_1

I think Bruyneel will drop him like a hot rock over this. I don't believe Kloeden

iainf72

2000, eh? What's the statute of limitations - Is it 8 years? He could go for the Zabel routine and admit it, cry and not have any punishment :P

iainf72

Dave_1 wrote:

I think Bruyneel will drop him like a hot rock over this. I don't believe Kloeden

Hmmm. Maybe Johann will ask him, he will deny it, Johan will say "ok, good enough for us" and then next month they'll put out a press release to tell us Klodi has mono.

Oh no, wait, that ones been done.

Kléber

It's the denial that makes it worse. Why pretend it's vitamins? When a report highlights institutional doping within the team, how come he's the only one getting freely available vitamin pills, and why were they sent to his girlfriend? Who does he take cycling fans and journalists for? Using crap excuses only makes him look sly and shifty, and will prolong the scandal.

Cynically speaking, he could easily come out and blame the old T-Mobile system, praise Bruyneel's new ways and coaching style and vow to stamp out doping, but no, we get a variant of the "it was my wife/dog/mother in law who needed the medicine" excuse.

In reality, a leopard doesn't change its spots and it's highly likely that methods used by T-Mobile were used by Astana last year, under the same Walter Goodefroot.

timoid.

From The Canadian Press

The last bit is particularly damning. Who believes Cadel is clean now? Or that Zabel tried doping once but didn't inhale?

It also explains Kloeden's disgust with T-Mobile's hyprocritical treatment of Ullrich and Sevilla in 2006.

Ullrich named in doping operation investigation at university clinic
2 days ago

FREIBURG, Germany — Top cyclists Jan Ullrich and Andreas Kloeden were named Saturday in an investigation of a doping operation carried out at a German university clinic.

Ullrich, the former Tour de France champion, and two-time Tour runner-up Kloeden were mentioned in an interim report released by Freiburg University, which is investigating the operation run for years from their clinic.

Two doctors have already been fired in the case, in which investigators concluded systematic doping was instrumental to the success of Team Telekom, later renamed T-Mobile.

"That is clear from the information that we have seen," the report said, adding doping took place between 1993 and 2006.

The German team produced two Tour de France champions, Ullrich in 1997 and Bjarne Riis in 1996. Riis and several other former Telekom riders confessed to using the endurance boosting drug EPO during those title years.

But Ullrich, since retired, has maintained his innocence of any doping. That is also the case for Kloeden - a fellow German who now rides for an Astana team shaken by several doping cases.

Kloeden's name surfaced in connection with a package allegedly mailed from the clinic two years after he signed with Team Telekom in 1998.

"During the year 2000, a medical delivery was sent to the girlfriend of Andrea Kloeden - in haste, overnight," said Hans Joachim Schaefer, chairman of the investigating committee.

The freight cost of 1,000 euros (C$1,581) was booked from a bank account maintained by Lothar Heinrich, one of the clinic's two fired doctors.

Two more clinic doctors have been linked but deny involvement in the operation which provided cyclists with performance-boosters ranging from EPO to own-blood transfusions.

"The criminal energy with which we are confronted is shocking," said Matthias Brandis, head of the university clinic.

Investigators believe Ullrich has a medical record at the clinic, coded under the birthday "Dec. 2, 1937." The German cyclist was born Dec. 2, 1973.

"If you reverse the numerals in the birth year, this old man gets a lot younger," Schaefer said.

Both the federal police and Freiburg district attorney's office are also investigating the clinic, but refused comment on the report.

The committee reported that it looked at 58,800 blood tests between 1995 and 2007 and found 92 positive tests - 57 of them from T-Mobile riders.

dave_1

Livingston, Julich? Many big names have gone through T mobile...Telekom...hundreds of athletes probably...this could be as big as Op Puerto

squired

1,000 Euros for some multi vitamins? Damn, he needs to get himself down to Holland and Barrett, as they are doing some really good deals at the moment!!!

Maybe I'm being cynical, but why get vitamins delivered to the girlfriend rather than him? Maybe he was at a race at the time, so needed them sent somewhere else, but if it was such a rush job that it was sent overnight that seems a bit unlikely.

It is very sad, but these guys constantly denying everything just make it harder for those who are clean. Even when the evidence is there they still deny it. Kloeden should just admit it and retire. He's made plenty of money from the sport anyway.

DaveyL

It's fair enough. I once had to get a taxi to the all-night pharmacy at 3 am as I'd run out of cod liver oil tablets.

In all seriousness though - it can't be as big as Puerto. T-Mobile didn't have footballers,, tennis players, athletes, etc. on their books....

andyp

DaveyL wrote:

It's fair enough. I once had to get a taxi to the all-night pharmacy at 3 am as I'd run out of cod liver oil tablets.

In all seriousness though - it can't be as big as Puerto. T-Mobile didn't have footballers,, tennis players, athletes, etc. on their books....

Didn't they sponsor Bayern Munich for a while?

DaveyL

Er, dunno. Maybe. But they're not in the report, are they?

Kléber

It's not the team as such, it is the use of the clinic at Freiburg University. As this is/was Germany's leading sports science faculty, it is not beyond impossible to imagine that other clients, from x-country skiiers to athletes and football players might also have visited.

DaveyL

OK, though a lot of them would have visited for innocent reasons. I see that, like Puerto, they have also used an impenetrable code....

top_bhoy

squired wrote:

1,000 Euros for some multi vitamins? Damn, he needs to get himself down to Holland and Barrett, as they are doing some really good deals at the moment!!!

The way I read it is that 1000 Euros was the freight cost alone - even by overnight post, this seems an expensive post for a package of multivits.Maybe the package was insured for 20000 Euros

dave_1

2 things

1) Shouldn't Zabel now be grounded?

2) re-opens the question, were ASO justified in excluding Astana? I think Yes..even thought I criticised the ASo decision...best clear out bad headline riders I guess

calvjones

Dave_1 wrote:

2 things

1) Shouldn't Zabel now be grounded?

2) re-opens the question, were ASO justified in excluding Astana? I think Yes..even thought I criticised the ASo decision...best clear out bad headline riders I guess

Isn't this the stuff that Z had already admitted to? The 1996(?) incomplete course of EPO?

dave_1

calvjones wrote:

Dave_1 wrote:

2 things

1) Shouldn't Zabel now be grounded?

2) re-opens the question, were ASO justified in excluding Astana? I think Yes..even thought I criticised the ASo decision...best clear out bad headline riders I guess

Isn't this the stuff that Z had already admitted to? The 1996(?) incomplete course of EPO?

true...there seems some dispute over dates. I can't beleve Aldag used EPO habitually to work for Zabel and yet Zabel did not use and they room shared for a decade..see Hell on WHeels...

GroupOfOne MkII

Dave_1 wrote:

1) Shouldn't Zabel now be grounded?

Didn't the committee investigating make a bit of a blunder in their description of Zabel's doping. See below quote from CN this morning

Zabel had confessed last May to having used EPO, something the interim report reiterated, only in a rather confusing manner. "The report was a bit wrong on this point," Schäfer said. "I can understand that Erik Zabel got upset over it."

So it seems like the report backs up Zabel's confession. He probably did know Aldag was using Evening Primrose Oil (I mean with the sort of level of doping we're talking about hear Zabel would have to be completely stupid to see no evidence of it),even if he never saw him actually taking it, but I wasn't aware we could ban riders (yet) for knowing that a team mate is doping.